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When your relationship is getting challenging with unhealthy cycles and hurtful patterns. Don’t wait to ignore or reject your partner by stonewalling or adopting contempt to express your ego injuries. What would be ideal is to mutually decide that you are acting out an unconscious script from childhood or your family multigenerational transmissions of trauma, every time something minute occurs. That’s the red flag that things will degenerate, unless you get professional help to uncover the root cause  of the challenges in your relationship

A marriage and family therapist (MFT) is a mental health professional who has received a rigorous training (a Master or PhD levels) in both psychotherapy and family systems. MFTs are licensed to diagnose and treat individuals, couples, families, and groups from a systems thinking perspective. Unlike many other mental health professionals, MFTs do not treat only an individual. They include the all the connections possible of individuals with their couple systems, family systems, family lineages, socio-cultural, socio-historical, socio-economic, and biopsychosocial and spiritual contexts that may have an influence or impact on them. The MFT ‘s integrative model has gained recognition among many other mental health professionals, various institutions, and schools of thoughts in the medical and mental health fields.

Each person and situation is different. However, a rule of thumb is not less than three months for successful couple or particular family outcome. Sometimes it takes one session to get people back on their preferred paths. Other times, years are necessary for continuity of care and to receive help with life transitions.

In couples therapy, both partners and their relationship are the focus of the marriage and family treatment. When couples disconnect, their individual selves are in charge of their relationship. Couples attempt to “fix” the other and what they perceive to be broken. The issue is we cannot heal what we are not aware of, and cannot resolve a problem doing the same things over and over. We say it’s the definition of insanity, for a good reason! Couples find themselves in more conflict-laden situations with their partners. In couples therapy, the relationship is deconstructed by both partners to understand each other’s worlds. Together they collaborate with the couples therapist to become two different whole beings, instead of fragmented selves. Once each partner learns how and what they mutually want to give and receive, they reconstruct their relationship from healthier grounds on com-passionate love. Deep within, they link their family histories and ancestral courage with their present life struggles. Being in couples therapy couples get to let go of their survival dance and grow inside/out within the relationship, not outside of it. They integrate positive change and find sustainable successful solutions.

There are several reasons. The first one is the marriage and family therapy field is  one of the youngest in the mental health field, itself. Many seasoned or traditional mental health professionals have never received formal training in systems thinking and/or systems theory to see couples or families. However, they were the first ones to detangle relationships based on a linear medical model. MFT and the different schools of MFT emerged in the 70’s with its pioneers coming from psychodynamic, psychiatric, or other medical disciplines. MFTs revolutionized the way of seeing an individual and verbal and non verbal communication. The second reason emanates from the first reason. Because MFT is the new kid around the block, managed care, insurances, and the legal systems have just recently started seeing the necessity of MFTs. Without being fully reimbursed, couples therapy remains unfortunately a certain luxury for many economically distressed relationships. Lastly, because there are more people than in individual therapy to deal with, and greater dynamics within a couple system to juggle, let alone an entire family, mental health professionals seeing couples and families thereby charge more. In a fair exchange system, The Love Nest was born to effectively help high-income couples and through an exclusive membership system, encourage them to become leaders in paying forward the cost of another economically disadvantaged couple.

A system is two or more parts, members, or things that are interconnected and interact together to form a unified whole in time and space, with a functioning and particular structure and organization within environmental conditions.

Recent genetic advances paired with family systems, systems thinking, and psychodynamic approaches have evidenced the influences of multigenerational transmission of trauma and resilience. With the surge of genetic testing and global needs for belonging, Western nations, and particularly, the United States, have deployed big data from gigantic teams of researchers to unearth the truth on who we are and the root causes of contemporary challenges.In today’s fast modern life, clients are tired of quick fixes and superficial liquid bonds while they are in search for meaning and fulfillment in solid relationships.  When clients search for life solutions, rarely have I heard, please Dr. Josiane, just help me half way and do not connect me with anyone of my family or ancestors. They might not really know why these connections with the past and ancestral lineage matter or still exist. Yet, in a playful and safe environment, loving the past and family stories help them love themselves and re-author their own life stories.